Definitions:

Fill rate: The (pixel) fill rate is quite simply, how many pixels on the computer display, your graphics hardware can alter (fill with new data) per second. But how much is a mega pixel really in practical terms? Take a look at the graphic below:

If you're looking for a rough estimate of how fast a given gfx card is, look at the texel fill rate and the triangle setup capabilities.

resolution

pixels

proportion

320 x 200

64 K

16:10

320 x 240

76.8 K

4:3

512 x 384

196.6 K

4:3

640 x 400

256 K

16:10

4* 320 x 200

640 x 480 (VGA)

307.2 K

4:3

4* 320 x 240

640 x 512

327.68 K

5:4

800 x 600 (SVGA)

480 K

4:3

832 x 624

519.2 K

4:3

1024 x 768 (XGA)

786.4 K

4:3

4* 512 x 384

1152 x 768

884.8 K

3:2

1280 x 1024

1.31 M

5:4

4* 640 x 512

1440 x 900

1.26 M

16:10

1600 x 1200

1.92 M

4:3

4* 800 x 600

1680 x 1050

1.76 M

16:10

1920 x 1200

2.3 M

16:10

2560 x 1600

4.1 M

16:10

As you can see from the above table, the pixel counts climb into the millions pretty quickly as you increase your display resolution. To determine how high a fill rate you need, you can use this formula:

So, for example, to play your favorite 3D game in 1600*1200 pixels with 60 frames per second (fps), you'd need a graphics chip that can pump out 1600*1200*60 = 115,2 million pixels per second. By modern graphics hardware, this is easily achieved.

Stencil Buffer: Pixel-based buffer used by graphics accelerators to store effect information for individual pixels. A stencil buffer 8 bit wide would allow for 256 (2^8) effect layers "on top" of each pixel. Usually employed in conjunction with a z buffer for effects such as fogging, shadowing etc.

Z Buffer: Pixel-based depth buffer used to determine the visibility of pixels in a rendered scene. The buffer provides a way for the renderer to determine whether a rendered pixel should be sent to the frame buffer, by comparing z (depth) values for each pixel in the rendered
polygons. The smaller the z value for a pixel, the closer it is to the observer. If a rendered pixel has a lower z value than an already rendered pixel, its color information overwrites that if the "old" pixel.

128-bit accelerator, up to 1920x1440 (3D), 2048x1536 (2D), RAM bandwidth 2.29 GBps, but still no 32bpp rendering or 32b texture support. Readded the second texturing unit that was originally removed from the Banshee, 16b Z-buffer

A texture unit is the same (performance wise) as a texel pipeline. You calculate the texel fill rate by multiplying the pixel fill rate by the number of texel/texturing units (TMU's).

Memory bandwidth is calculated by multiplying the memory bus width with the memory clock speed. Keep in mind that this will give you the peak speed (theoretical maximum). Fill rate is calculated by multiplying core clock by the number of pixel and texel pipelines in the chip.

- Rage Pro Turbo is really just a Rage Pro with a nice name. Turbo name was due to a software update that needed extra publicity from ATI, i think.
- RAGE 128 supports textures up to 2048^2 pixels.
- Rage 128 Ultra was a version of the 128 Pro with extra RAM (16 M in all) at a cheap price. Summer 2000?
- Radeon 8500 featured TRUFORM, SMARTSHADER. RADEON 8500LE was later renamed
9100.